A FEATHERED NOTABLE 97 
seem an error at all. For example, a hawking 
swallow may capture and try to bolt a wasp or 
other dangerous insect without first killing or 
crushing it, and in doing so receive a fatal sting 
in the throat. The flight of hawking swallows and 
swifts is so rapid that it hardly gives them time 
to judge of the precise nature of the insect appear- 
ing before them which a second’s delay would lose. 
This is seen in swallows and swifts so frequently 
getting hooked by dry-fly anglers. Birds of prey, 
too, occasionally meet their death in a similar way, 
as when a kite or falcon or buzzard or eagle lifts 
a stoat or weasel, and the lithe little creature 
succeeds in wriggling up and fixing its teeth in the 
bird’s flesh. If they fall from a considerable 
height both are killed. Again, birds sometimes get 
killed by attempting to swallow too big a morsel, 
and I think this is oftenest the case with birds 
that have rather weak beaks and have developed 
a rapacious habit. I remember once seeing a Guira 
cuckoo with head hanging and wings drooping, 
struggling in vain to swallow a mouse stuck fast 
in its gullet, the tail still hanging from its beak. 
Undoubtedly the bird perished, as I failed in my 
attempts to capture it and save its life by pulling 
the mouse out. A common tyrant-bird of South 
America, Pitangus, preys on mice, small snakes, 
lizards and frogs, as well as on large insects, but 
mvariably hammers its prey on a branch until it 
is bruised to a pulp and broken up. It will work 
at a mouse in this way until the skin is so bruised 
